Exactly as You Are

Exactly as You Are

EXACTLY AS YOU ARE The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers

Shea Tuttle

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 www.eerdmans.com © 2019 Shea Tuttle All rights reserved Published 2019 Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ISBN 978-0-8028-7655-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Tuttle, Shea, 1983– author.

Title: Exactly as you are : the life and faith of Mister Rogers / Shea Tuttle.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers pursues a rich understanding of this good, kind, sometimes strange, deeply influential, holy man: the neighborhood he came from, the neighborhood he built, and the kind of neighbor he, by his example, calls all of us to be even now, in our own troubled time”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019022638 | ISBN 9780802876553 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Rogers, Fred—Religion. | Television personalities —United States—Biography. | Presbyterian Church—United States—Clergy—Biography. | Mister Rogers’ neighborhood (Television program) | Television and children. | Moral education.

Classification: LCC PN1992.4.R56 T88 2019 | DDC 791.4502/8092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022638

For Kyrianne and Halley, and for Drew

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction Why hi, don’t I know you?

1

BECOMING MISTER ROGERS From Latrobe, Pennsylvania, to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

1. Childhood, Love, and Fear Are you brave and don’t know it?

9

2. The First Neighborhood It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

15

3. Adolescence and Acceptance I like you as you are.

21

vii

Contents 4. College Years, Loneliness, and Musical Expression I’m learning to sing a sad song when I’m sad.

5. Formation in New York City You’re growing.

28

34

6. Whimsy and Seriousness on The Children’s Corner 43 It’s a neighborly day in this beauty wood.

7. Graduate Studies and Life-­Transforming Teachers Did you know when you marvel, you’re learning?

56

8. Canada, Fatherhood, and Separation I like to be told when you’re going away.

64

9. Television and the Church It’s the people you like the most who can make you feel maddest.

70

BROADCASTING GRACE Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

10. Change, Fear, and Peace We all want peace.

85

11. Neighborhood Liturgy I’ll be back when the day is new.

95

viii

Contents 12. Parables of the Kingdom Won’t you be my neighbor?

104

13. Difference in the Neighborhood I like someone who sings like, and walks like, and talks like, and looks like you.

111

HELLO, NEIGHBOR Finding Fred Rogers

14. Puppets and Personality I think I’ll let the people see the comfortable inside of me.

127

15. Friends and Neighbors There are many ways to say I love you.

135

16. Fred’s Big Feelings The very same people who are mad sometimes are the very same people who are glad sometimes.

147

17. All Ground as Holy Ground Keep us safe and faithful, God. Tell us what to do.

158

18. Heaven Is a Neighborhood Goodnight, God, and thank you for this very lovely day.

166

Notes

175

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

t is more clear to me than ever that writing a book is the work of a neighborhood. Here are some of the friends and neighbors to whom I owe great thanks: It was a joy to talk to people who knew Fred Rogers, including Randee Humphrey, Tom Junod, Cindy Kernick, Tim Madigan, John McCall, and Christopher de Vinck. Michael Horton and François Clemmons were particularly generous with their time and insights, and I’m grateful to know them both. I am also particularly grateful to Lisa Hamilton for trusting me with her remembrances. Thanks to Lynn Japinga for getting me in touch with Lisa. Lynn Johnson shared her memories and her photographs, which capture Fred’s spirit like no others I’ve seen. I’m honored that she agreed to license one of her photos for the cover of this book.

Thanks to all at Fred Rogers Productions, especially Lynn Butler, who sent books and CDs, and Matthew Shiels, who worked with me on permissions. In addition to offering his xi

Acknowledgments own insights, Bill Isler enabled many connections and conversations that furthered this project. I’m grateful, too, to the team at the Fred Rogers Center at St. Vincent College, and especially to Emily Uhrin at the Fred Rogers Archive, who answered dozens of questions, pulled scores of documents, and knows so much more than I could ever think to ask about Fred and his life and work. Jim Okonak at the McFeely-Rogers Foundation was unfailingly kind, generous, and helpful.

I am greatly indebted to Tim Lybarger and the Neighborhood Archive at www.neighborhoodarchive.com. I cannot overstate the value of the site for referencing songs, episodes, characters, history, and more from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, The Children’s Corner, and beyond.

Fred’s own neighborhoods were every bit as welcoming as one might hope. Debbie Herwick of Latrobe United Methodist Church, Arlene Jones and Rev. Clark Kerr of Latrobe Presbyterian Church, and Pamela Ferrero of the Latrobe Area Historical Society helpfully answered my questions. Rev. ­Carolyn Cranston, Dr. Helen Blier, and Anne Malone at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary also helped me check facts and satisfy curiosities.

I am grateful to Linda Meise, Anna Byrne, and Patricia Abrames for permitting me to quote their letters to Mister Rogers. Thanks as well to Joanna Milano and Mike Abrames for helping me get in touch with them. Thanks to Larry Nudelman for sharing his documents and stories.

Thanks to Jason Marsh, Jeremy Adam Smith, Kira Newman, Hong Nguyen, and Greater Good Magazine for the opportunity to write about Fred. Some of the material in chapter 12 appeared first in their journal. Thanks to Kristen Manieri at The Synced Life Podcast for great questions and conversation about Fred.

I am grateful to the whole team at Eerdmans and its members, past and present: Lil Copan, who guided me through the xii

Acknowledgments proposal process and delivered me to Eerdmans; David Bratt, whose insights were always pitch-perfect; freelance editor Victoria Jones, whose edits, fact-checks, and keen observations made this book infinitely better; and Linda Bieze, who shepherded the project through its final stages. Rachel Brewer has been a thoughtful and savvy conversation partner. Meg Schmidt designed the cover and conceived and drew the interior illustrations, and I couldn’t be happier with them. Thanks to Leah Luyk for the lovely interior, Laura Bardolph Hubers for publicity work, and freelancer Tim Baker for proofreading.

Additional thanks to Tracy Danz and Anita Eerdmans for early conversations, enthusiasms, and connections.

Christy Edwall, Megan Hunt Fryling, Chuck Mathewes, Kim Wagner, and Kristin Tuttle helped with Greek and French.

Caroline Kelly, Elizabeth Stewart, and Nancy Myer clarified Presbyterian procedure. Thanks to all of them.

Thanks to the team at Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing, especially Karen Mann and Kathleen Driskell. Spalding’s program is flexible and compassionate enough to allow me to be on leave while working on this book, and it’s been a gift to feel supported from a distance and to know that I can return at the right time to a welcoming writing home.

Thanks to Charles Marsh at the Project on Lived Theology for getting the conversation started and for writerly advice along the way. And thanks to Jessica Seibert for ­being such a good friend and collaborator at the Project. I’m grateful to Karen Wright Marsh for support, enthusiasm, and a couple of late-night chats in Grand Rapids. Thanks also to Peter Slade, who read an early draft of a short piece on Fred Rogers and helpfully reminded me of Fred’s delightful strangeness.

Michael G. Long, the author of Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers (among many other books), has been integral to this process. Mike’s research was immensely xiii

Acknowledgments helpful to me, and his collegiality, advice, kindness, and confidence have been generous beyond measure.

Meredith McNabb lent me a book for a very extended period and graciously cheered me on at every opportunity.

Amanda Baier-Miles is a patient and brilliant photographer and a generous friend. I’m grateful for her compassion, support, and thoughtfulness. Josey Bridges Snyder helped with Hebrew and shared in kitchen table writing camp, and her friendship never falters across the miles or months (or years).

I am thankful for and to Jack Ridl, who is a light in the world, and whose confidence in this project sustained me through more than a few seasons of doubt.

Aubrey Collins, Cheryl Klein, Hannah Shanks, Debbie Weingarten, and Jennifer Young, fabulous writers all, I’m so grateful for you I can hardly stand it. I couldn’t possibly list all the ways you’ve helped this book happen, much less the countless strange and wonderful ways you’ve graced my life.

Thank you.

Thanks to my mom, Angela Tuttle, my first and most dedicated reader, and to my dad, Rick Tuttle. Your steadfast support makes pretty much everything that’s possible, possible. Thanks to Erin Lockridge and Kristin Tuttle for your endurance, excitement, and ideas, for tolerating my absences at Christmas, and for watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood with me when we were little. Thanks to Brooke and Vicki Willson for caring for our kids so I could have writing camp(s!), and for your ongoing support.

Thanks to Drew for gifts too numerous to name: for being a smart critic, a staunch defender, a brilliant conversation partner, a theological co-creator, and my best friend.

Kyrianne and Halley, thanks for watching Mister Rogers with me, and for loving him, and for loving me, and for being you. I love you.

xiv

INTRODUCTION

Why hi, don’t I know you?

eekday afternoons when I was a child often found me curled up on the brown, plaid couch in our basement family room, draped in a homely, single-­yarn brown afghan, my fingers poking through its open knit. I’d settle in as the opening sequence unfolded: the aerial view of the neighborhood giving way to a zoom shot of the house’s exterior, the camera then cutting inside to the living room and panning toward the front door, through which a slender man entered with purpose, met my eyes for the first time, and smiled. The ascending piano chords, then the song, familiar as a prayer: “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine?”

As he sang, he hung his blazer in the closet and put on a zippered sweater, then sat down and swapped his loafers for a pair of navy canvas sneakers by the time the song ended.

“Hello, neighbor,” he’d greet me.

“Hello, Mister Rogers,” I’d reply.

1

Introduction On many of our visits, he’d bring something with him— maybe pretzels, wooden blocks, or a musical instrument. He’d tell me a little bit about whatever it was before getting interrupted by a knock at the door or a phone call, which would often bring an invitation that would take us out into the neighborhood to visit the bakery or the music store, a restaurant or an arts center. Later in the program, once we had returned to the house, Mister Rogers would say, “Let’s have some make-­ believe,” and remind me of what was transpiring when last we visited the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe, where a motley crew of people and puppets made their way through neighborhood politics, personal insecurities, and more.

Mister Rogers would summon Trolley, the cheerful red streetcar who guided the transition into Make-­Believe, and I, from my corner of the couch, would let out a sigh—I preferred the segments of the show in Mister Rogers’s company to the interlude in Make-­Believe—but only a small sigh, because I knew that, in just a few minutes, Trolley would faithfully return me to that living room and to Mister Rogers. Then we would sing a little and talk about what we did that day and what we would do tomorrow. We’d acknowledge the wonderful ways I was growing, the good feelings that gave me, and my astonishing singularity in the world. And then we would say goodbye, until tomorrow.

Over the years, I grew out of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

I forgot the storylines and many of the songs. But I remembered the man, and I remembered how he and his program made me feel: completely seen, completely loved. I cannot recall the precise origin of my affection for Mister Rogers, and I cannot quite explain its intensity. I just know that he is indescribably special to me; I feel as if I have always known him, like he was a part of my becoming. It is not simple nostalgia, fleeting and saccharine. It is deeper than nostalgia. It is formation. It is love.

2

Introduction

There’s a whole lot to say about Fred Rogers, who was a man of complexity—even contradiction. He was whimsical yet disciplined, a gentle control freak, deeply passionate yet measured, strange and beloved. He was, in the words of his friend Tom Junod, “a slip of a man”—5'11" and 143 pounds—yet had a will of iron.1 He was, in ways, transparent: for many years, his wife, Joanne, has said of him, “What you see is what you get,”2 and the TV writer James Kaplan once wrote that Fred Rogers in person was “more Mister Rogers than Mister Rogers.”3 But he was also, in ways, opaque. In 1989, John Sedgwick titled his Wigwag magazine profile of Fred “Who the Devil Is Fred Rogers?,” and when those who knew him best set out to establish the Fred Rogers Center after his death in 2003, they asked each other, “OK, so who the hell was Fred?”4 In the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Fred’s own son says, “I sometimes wonder myself how he ticked.”5 Even Fred’s self-­definition is complex. Asked in 1986 who the real Mister Rogers was, he replied, as ever, slowly, thoughtfully: “I’m a composer and a piano player, a writer and a television producer . . . almost by accident, a performer . . . a husband and a father. And I am a minister.”6 A minister. This role was essential to Fred’s complex identity, though he didn’t often foreground it publicly. Faith was a major part of who he was, and it had been from the very beginning. During his childhood, he spent virtually every Sunday morning in church. He planned to go to seminary following college but ended up changing course to work in television. In 1954, while working on his first children’s program, he finally enrolled at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh and began taking courses during his lunch hour.

He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1963 and given a special charge to minister to children and families through 3

Introduction the mass media. Within five years of his ordination, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was airing nationwide. “It’s very theological, what we do,” Fred said about the program.7 In truth, Fred could have said that about pretty much any aspect of his life. He was a religious person through and through, extraordinarily thoughtful and intentional, and his faith was constantly present to him. He began every day at 5 a.m. with prayer and Bible study, talked frequently with close friends about matters of faith, and prayed each time he stepped onto the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood set, “Let some word that is heard be thine.”8 When Fred looked into the lens of the camera and spoke to his “television neighbors,” he offered his most core beliefs without ever speaking of God directly. “I’m giving the children myself and whoever I am,” he said in 1974.

Anything that’s a part of me becomes a part of the program. My relationship with God, which I feel is very comfortable and healthy, cannot ever be disassociated from who I am on the program, even though I don’t deal in overt theological terms. Our dialog with children constantly includes acceptance of someone exactly as she or he is at the moment. I feel that’s how God operates. Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that “I like you as you are and let’s grow together from there.”9

Without using the overt language of faith on the air, Mister Rogers relentlessly preached his gospel: you are loved just the way you are. He testified to this love with conviction despite knowing well that not all children live in a loving home (and he heard from many such children, over the years, who thanked him for representing a reality beyond their nightmarish households). He could preach love—and do it with 4

Introduction such contagious conviction—because the message was rooted in something deeper than mere affection or transitory admiration: Fred’s own belief in “a loving mystery at the heart of the universe that yearns to be expressed.”10 Fred worked hard every day to help express that loving mystery, to offer God’s abundant love without condition to children, parents, Neighborhood staff, strangers on the street, people who wrote him letters—anyone and everyone who encountered him whether on television or in person. He did not do it perfectly—he was as human as you or me—but he did it extraordinarily.

“You know, when I decided to look for work in television, I couldn’t possibly have known how I would be used,” Fred said in 1994. “I’ve simply tried to be open to the possibilities God has made available to me.”11

5

BROADCASTING GRACE Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

11 NEIGHBORHOOD LITURGY

I’ll be back when the day is new.

hildren are creatures of liturgy. For that matter, so are adults. We humans respond very well to routine. Some of us crave or even require it. Inarguably, we are shaped by it; whatever we do again and again, in the same order, in the same kinds of ways, conditions us to expect whatever comes next. When the music starts, we expect it to finish. When the piano begins its ascending line, we know, by the time we reach the top, we’ll see Mister Rogers opening the door.

Freddy Rogers spent every Sunday of his childhood at Latrobe Presbyterian Church. He squirmed in the pews, got shushed by his parents, no doubt left mid-­service sometimes to go to the bathroom. During long sermons he studied the stained glass windows, with their depictions of lilies, holly, and rose of Sharon, or gazed up at the broad, round light fixtures, gold leaves and flowers circling their edges. As he got older, he participated more and more: standing to sing or recite creeds, shaking hands during the passing of the peace, 95

Broadcasting Grace receiving the bread and wine during Communion. Even as Fred grew, these rituals didn’t necessarily convey great meaning each and every Sunday; like all of us, Fred sometimes just went through the motions. But then, that’s what liturgy is all about: we go through the motions, again and again, because we believe those motions make us who we are. Those rituals—to use language that Fred Rogers might use—help us to grow on the inside.

Fred Rogers was probably the rare college kid who kept on going to church even when he left home. After college, when he moved to New York, he sought out moments of prayer in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and when he saw Joanne Byrd in person for the first time after proposing to her by mail, he asked her to take him to the church where she sang in the choir on Sundays. It was there, in a church pew, that he gave her a diamond ring and they shared a kiss.1 Later, during the months when Fred and Josie Carey were flying to New York City each weekend to air NBC’s weekly episode of The Children’s Corner, Fred insisted on flying back to Pittsburgh on Saturday nights so he could be home for church on Sundays. The Rogers family’s liturgy of attending church, and the church’s own liturgies of word and sacrament, did exactly what they were supposed to do: they formed Fred Rogers into the kind of person who keeps the liturgy.

So it’s no wonder that when Fred designed his own program in his own neighborhood, he built both out of liturgies: the music accompanying the aerial shot of the (model) neighborhood, the musical ascent coinciding with the camera’s approach to the house, the opening door, the singular man. Next: the song, the blazer off and onto the hanger, the sweater on and zipped, the loafers traded for sneakers. And the greeting: “Hello, neighbor!”

Here, the format loosened, but the liturgies didn’t end.

For instance, Mister Rogers always told his television neigh96

Neighborhood Liturgy bors about where they were going and what they would be doing before any of it happened. The trolley always led into the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe. At some point in each episode, Mister Rogers fed his fish.

In a sense, Rogers’ “television house,” as he calls it, is a children’s church, and the program . . . is a children’s service, with its own rituals (the donning of the sneakers and cardigan sweater, the feeding of the fish), readings (from the gospel of King Friday from the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe), hymns (the many Neighborhood songs he composes), and sermons (the show’s “important talk,” about, say, the death of a goldfish).2

Like all good liturgies, Mister Rogers’s liturgies were open to growth and change. Famously, he received a letter from a child who was blind, saying she worried sometimes about whether he had fed the fish. From then on, he always spoke aloud that he was giving the fish their food.3 He also simplified his transitions to and from Make-­Believe (early episodes had a two-­part transition, including a telescope as well as a trolley, and sometimes a pull-­out couch or a tin-­can telephone). And his closing song changed from “Tomorrow” in the early days to “It’s Such a Good Feeling,” to which, still later, he added the tag that begins, “I’ll be back when the day is new . . .” assuring that the liturgy would return again.

Some of the elements of the liturgy originated in practicality. For instance, Fred began wearing tennis shoes during the days of The Children’s Corner because he frequently had to run from the organ, which sat at the far end of the studio, to the main set. Quite simply, he needed shoes that enabled him to run quietly. Later, the shoes took on a different significance, cuing children that their time together would be 97

Broadcasting Grace comfortable and casual, and, just as importantly, that it would be set apart from the rest of the more buttoned-­up workday.

(Incidentally, “set apart” is the Sunday school–approved definition of the word holy. It’s no stretch at all to say that Fred believed his visits with his television neighbors to be times of holy exchange.)

Fred thought very carefully about the elements of his program, and virtually everything was done with intention.

Each episode progresses from left to right “to accustom the children’s eyes to reading.”

Each scene begins with a wide setup shot; the disembodied heads of extreme closeups are avoided to preserve what psychologists call “body integrity”; and comings and goings are always elaborately staged. The neighbors rarely appear without telephoning first, then are greeted extravagantly when they arrive. And no one leaves without saying goodbye. Topics come and go in the same deliberate way—introduced, explained, restated, and finally dismissed.4

This intentionality came from all the most important parts of who Fred was. It was clearly due in large part to his child development training, which taught him about children’s reliance on routine. In 1991, as the Gulf War was beginning, Fred Rogers’s nonprofit, Family Communications, sent a memo to PBS stations across the country. “As the adult world with its Persian Gulf situation continues to provide uncertainty and distress, we in Public Television can help young children by providing their regular and predictable preschool programming,” the memo said. “Knowing what to do comforts preschoolers.”5 The consistent format and elements of the program, and the way those elements worked together, were also connected 98

Neighborhood Liturgy to Fred’s musical training. Fred often explained the relationship between the program segments in his television home and the segments in Make-­Believe using the musical metaphor of theme and variation.6 “He likens a transition to the modulation between two keys,” John Sedgwick wrote in his 1989 profile of Fred. “You always want to work with the three or four or five common notes for a while before you get from one to the other,” Fred told him.7 But I suspect that the deepest reason for the program’s shape was that Fred was a person formed in liturgy. When he returned to a song about fear or anger or love that he had sung dozens of times before, it was partly because his child development training told him that children thrive on routine. It was partly because his musical training taught him how a melody can anchor learning in abiding memory. But it was mostly because, somewhere in the oldest parts of himself, Fred remembered standing to sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on Sundays when he felt sad or scared—or, for that matter, content or bored. He remembered the relief of standing, after a long sermon, and taking a deep breath. He remembered his mother’s voice above and to one side, and his father’s voice above and to the other, the way their voices rose and converged, how his own young voice found the melody by fitting itself into his parents’ larger, surer voices like a hand into a glove. He remembered how he believed a little better when he sang, and how he carried the melody through the day, whether he meant to or not.

The grown-­up Fred Rogers, in his life away from the Neighborhood, was a man of liturgy as well. He rose early each morning to read his Bible and to pray, and then he went to the pool for a swim before heading to work. “Years ago,” he told his viewers during a 1982 episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, “I promised 99

Broadcasting Grace myself that I would try to swim a certain length of time each day.

And I’ve done that almost every day for more than ten years.”8 Fred shared, in the spring of 2000, that he was in the practice of standing on the side of the pool, before beginning his swim, and singing “Jubilate Deo,” a song from the Taizé community in France. The song’s words, “Jubilate Deo,” mean simply “Rejoice in God.” “I don’t sing it very loud,” he added.9 Fred’s swimming liturgy led to another one, one that is practically cellular and not a little strange. Tom Junod’s profile tells it best: Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-­one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds.

And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change—he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television—and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him that he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’ One hundred and forty-­three. ‘I love you.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”10

When Fred traveled to different time zones, he didn’t change his watch, his schedule, or his routine. Bill Isler, pres100

Neighborhood Liturgy ident and CEO of Family Communications (later the Fred Rogers Company) from 1987 until 2016, remembers Fred once calling his hotel room in California at 4 a.m. Fred asked Bill if he wanted to go to the gym and run while Fred was swimming.

Bill declined; Fred was unfazed.11 Fred also made a point, wherever he was, to play the piano every day.

Fred’s discipline and intentionality showed up even in his everyday speech. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a “program” and never a “show.” Children and families “used” rather than “watched” the program; they were not merely passive receivers, and his language acknowledged their agency and activity.

Fred avoided the first person, when he could, and he especially avoided the possessive pronoun my. Instead he spoke of “our work” or “our offices” when speaking of his professional life, and when referring to his home life, he always referred to “our sons,” “our home,” or “our family.”

I asked several people what they made of Fred’s remarkable discipline. Was it something he craved or even required?

Or was it something he worked at even if it didn’t come naturally? Bill Isler credited the influence of Fred’s parents: his businessman father and service-­oriented mother were both people of discipline. He also pointed to Fred’s musical life.

“I remember sitting on a front porch one time, and a young woman across the street was practicing piano,” Bill told me.

“And I said, ‘I could listen to that all the time. It’s just a lot of fun.’ ” Fred replied, “It’s not any fun for her.” Bill also remembers Fred sharing the wisdom of Christoph von Dohnányi, Fred and Joanne’s friend from Rollins who became a famous conductor. He would say, “If I miss one practice, I know. If I miss two practices, the conductor knows. If I miss three practices, the audience knows.” On the program, Bill reminded me, Fred would emphasize both talent and hard work whenever he brought an artist or athlete to meet his television neighbors.

“Yeah,” Bill said, “discipline is something he worked at.”12 101

Broadcasting Grace Fred worked hard to be a disciplined person because it was of paramount importance to him that he be a trustworthy adult. As noted in chapter 9, Fred believed that people who worked in television were entrusted with enormous responsibility, and he worked to be worthy of what he believed was a high calling. On the Neighborhood, this translated in ways both broad and specific: Broadly, he strove to be exactly the same person on screen as off. Specifically, he made small changes over time to move toward consistency and honesty. The lines between reality and Make-­Believe in early episodes were blurry—King Friday even spoke to Mister Rogers by phone— but later, the boundaries were absolute. When Big Bird was to appear on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred requested that he be able to show his audience how the puppet was operated and to introduce Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer, to his viewers. When Spinney declined, Fred insisted that Big Bird appear only in the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe, where anything is possible. To have Big Bird visit Mister Rogers’s television home as a character would have been, in Fred’s worldview, dishonest.13 Fred cultivated honesty and consistency in himself the same way he cultivated love of self in his viewers: by choosing good liturgies and keeping them day after day, program after program, prayer after prayer, and song after song.

Less than a year before Fred died, his friend Tim Madigan, a journalist, asked him to share his favorite poem for a newspaper article. Fred replied, at length, in an email that revealed the staying power of his liturgies: Those lines which we read, and sometimes memorize, at the beginning of our lives travel with us all our

102

Neighborhood Liturgy days. . . . And so I must admit there is a “favorite” poem from every poet I have ever loved. But to choose one favorite I find myself going even further back in my life to a psalm of King David, which my parents recited to me many, many times when I was very, very young.

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures . . . ” I can hear both my mother’s and my father’s voices saying that psalm. . . . Throughout my life, I’ve studied that psalm—that song, that poem—in different English translations as well as in different languages and have read countless scholarly commentaries, and while I have long since given up the “thees” and “thous” of most biblical translations, the Psalm 23 that I repeat every day is the one my parents “taught” me all those years ago. In 1970, when my Dad was very ill and I had to go on a two-­day work trip I remember as vividly as if it were only yesterday the last things we talked about . . . and right after that we just naturally said the 23rd Psalm together. The next day, while I was away, Dad died. “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” are the last words we spoke with each other in this life.14

The word liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia, often translated as “the work of the people.” Shaped as he was by liturgy, Fred quietly ushered his viewers—and even his staff— into that work too, through songs and shoes and goldfish, and even the piano theme from 1940s Pathé newsreels that he played to signal that the filming day was done.15 Through his liturgies, Mister Rogers discipled millions of people into the work—the hard, sometimes monotonous, always soul-­ expanding work—of neighborly love.

103

12 PA R A B L E S O F T H E K I N G D O M

Won’t you be my neighbor?

red Rogers found his own faith, at times, a little uncomfortable to talk about. “I think it’s really tough—for some people, it’s very easy to talk about spiritual things, and I get really turned off by those who can be so glib about it,” he said.

Fred came from a reticent, practical family, dedicated to faith and service without ever wanting to broadcast either one. He also worried, at times, about the potential impact on his program or his viewers if he talked about his beliefs too openly: “This is all very personal, you know. I have never flaunted my faith. In fact, there were years when I wouldn’t tell people about my ordination because I didn’t want anybody to think that I was using it in any way to further the program in the eyes of certain groups.

“And, I also didn’t want some children to feel excluded.”

Still, Fred knew that his faith infused his work. “I think that my faith has affected everything that I’ve done,” he said, “but that’s only natural; so have my genes.”1 Whether 104

Parables of the Kingdom he was vocal about it or not, faith was as fundamental to Fred as DNA. To bridge the gap between his discomfort and caution on the one side and the faith that made him who he was on the other, he relied on story. “What a tough job to try to communicate the gift of Jesus Christ to anybody,” he marveled in a 1979 letter to a friend. “It can’t be simply talked about, can it? Jesus himself used parables—so I guess that’s our directive: try to show the kingdom of God through stories as much as possible.”2 Christians of many stripes find plenty to argue about when it comes to what “the kingdom of God” entails. Most agree that it’s not simply heaven, some other place in some other realm. Rather, it has to do with the establishment of God’s order on earth, both now, in a way that is ongoing and ever-­becoming, and in the future, in a more definite, final, full form. “God’s order” looks something like the vision offered by the words of Isaiah that Jesus reads in the temple at the start of his ministry: good news for the poor, release for prisoners, sight for the blind, and liberation for the oppressed.

This, Isaiah writes and Jesus reads, is what God’s favor looks like (Luke 4:18–19).

But Jesus had trouble talking about the kingdom of God too. As Fred notes in his letter, Jesus most often tried to explain God’s kingdom through parables, many of which begin, “The kingdom of God is like . . .” He tries again and again, throughout the Gospels, to find an apt metaphor, even asking aloud, “What is God’s kingdom like? To what can I compare it?” (Luke 13:18, CEB; see also Luke 13:20 and Mark 4:30). It’s almost as if each attempt leaves him dissatisfied, and so he tries one more time.

Fred patterned his own storytelling after this example.

The Neighborhood of Make-­Believe, with its eclectic cast of puppets and people, was the perfect place for Fred to stage 105

Broadcasting Grace his own parables and work out his own theology of the kingdom of God. Though many of his storylines were theological only in the loosest sense, some showed his kingdom theology clearly. A striking example is the narrative arc during a week on conflict (episodes 1521–25), which first aired in November 1983.

Since Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s first national week in 1968, a lot had changed. King Friday had married Queen Sara Saturday in 1969, and Prince Tuesday was born in 1970. In the wider world, the Vietnam War receded, coming to a definitive end in 1975, but new political tensions were mounting as, in the early ’80s, the anticommunist Reagan administration intervened in Central America and the Caribbean islands. At the same time, the United States, along with much of the developed world, was pursuing ever-­increasing nuclear power.3 Fred was as concerned as ever about war and its myriad costs, so he crafted a parable for his Neighborhood of Make-­Believe to represent a better way—a kingdom of God, “gift of Jesus Christ” kind of way.

Prince Tuesday’s class at the neighborhood school is in the middle of a social studies lesson, studying a world map, when they have occasion to remember that part of Side-­Step Land used to be called Down-­Under Land before their recent war.

“We’ve never had a war here in Make-­Believe, have we?” the prince asks. “Not that I know of,” Miss Cow replies. “There’s no mention of a war in this neighborhood in any of the history books.”

Later in the day, the prince arrives home and confirms with his father that it’s true: there have been no wars in Make-­Believe. But that may be about to change. King Friday has just learned about neighboring Southwood’s order of 106

Parables of the Kingdom “parts” from Cornflake S. Pecially’s factory in the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe. King Friday, who did not entirely resign his fears (and consequent warring tendencies) after receiving those peace balloons in 1968, immediately suspects that Southwood must be planning to build bombs. In the week’s second episode, he finds out just how many parts Southwood has ordered—one million!—and this, to him, confirms his suspicion. In response, he places his own order with Corney’s factory: “If Southwood has a million, we will have a million and one!”

Tensions build within the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe over the course of the week. Thanks to a healthy neighborhood bank balance, King Friday has recently convened a committee to recommend a purchase for the neighborhood school. Lady Elaine, a committee member, has decided to recommend the purchase of a record player, but then she learns that the money will be going instead to the factory to pay for the million and one parts. As the parts begin to be delivered, King Friday puts Make-­Believe residents to work building bombs in the castle. Finally, on the week’s fourth episode, Lady Aberlin and Lady Elaine, the neighborhood dissidents, form a peace delegation and travel to Southwood to investigate. Upon arriving, they discover the real reason for Southwood’s order: they aren’t building bombs after all; they’re building a bridge.

The residents of Make-­Believe—King Friday included—are relieved to learn that Southwood’s intentions are peaceful.

They plan a celebration with their new friends, and King Friday apologizes. The kind bridge builder from Southwood even uses some of the parts King Friday purchased in his warmongering fear to build the record player the neighborhood can no longer afford. The king, once again converted, pledges to build record players from the rest of the million and one parts, and to give one to every school in the world.

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Broadcasting Grace As Mister Rogers is leaving his television house at the end of the week’s final episode, he pauses on his porch to sing: Peace and quiet.

Peace, peace, peace.

Peace and quiet.

Peace, peace, peace.

Peace and quiet.

Peace, peace, peace.

We all want peace; We all want peace.4

Following the song, as Mister Rogers leaves for the weekend, the screen fades to a shot of these words: And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning forks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war any more.

The quote is unattributed—Fred was still hesitant about broadcasting his beliefs so overtly, a hesitation that seems ironic after the week’s bold storyline—but it comes from Isaiah 2:4, in which the prophet recounts his vision of God’s good future, the kingdom of God, realized at last on the earth.

It’s almost as if Fred Rogers began the week saying, “The kingdom of God is like . . .” and filled in the rest with a story.

For Fred, if the kingdom of God is a place where swords are beaten into plowshares, then it is a place where bombs are built into bridges, where the wasteful accumulations of fear and power are converted into record players, where children’s needs—once sacrificed to the warring whims of kings—are ultimately met, where even the warring king can be converted 108

Parables of the Kingdom through connection. The kingdom of God, for Fred Rogers, is a neighborhood.

Perhaps the neighborhood, and the idea of neighboring, was Mister Rogers’s most persistent parable—if also his most covert. “Hello, neighbor,” “I’d like you to know my television neighbor,” “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,” “the Neighborhood of Make-­Believe”—the “neighbor” language is so omnipresent, it’s easy to miss how theological it is. Mister Rogers, who carefully considered every word he spoke onscreen, didn’t call his viewers “acquaintances” or “friends”; he didn’t call us “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen.”

He called us “neighbors.”

There’s no denying that “neighbor” is biblical language.

The Hebrew Bible instructs God’s people to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18, CEB), and in the New Testament, Jesus discusses this commandment with a legal expert who tries to lay a conversational trap for him (Luke 10:25–37, CEB).

“And who is my neighbor?” the scholar asks slyly.

And Jesus answers, as he often did, and as Fred Rogers himself learned to do, with a story. In the story, a man is beaten by thieves and left to die. A priest—a powerful man, both religiously and politically—approaches, sees the injured man, and crosses to the other side of the road to avoid helping. Then another religious leader does the same. Finally, someone else comes down the road, someone of the wrong class or the wrong color, a member of a despised group. Though he is on a journey, he stops. “Moved with compassion,” he tends the injured man, takes him to an inn, and pays for his lodging and care.

“What do you think?” Jesus asks his tricky interlocutor after finishing the story. “Which one of these three was a neighbor?”

And though perhaps he can’t believe he is saying so, the scholar answers, “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him.”

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Broadcasting Grace When Mister Rogers called his viewers “neighbors,” when he hosted us in his neighborhood for over thirty years, he was playing out his own greatest parable: calling us, gently but firmly, into lives of mercy and care for one another. He knew we wouldn’t always get it right, that we are prone, like the king he lovingly created, to bow to fear and to serve competition, to privilege our own safety and to neglect others’ real needs. Maybe, in calling us neighbors, he knew he was calling us something better than we actually were. But maybe he believed that if he got to us while we were young, if he told us, again and again, that we are good, that we are lovable, and that we can build bridges of mercy, maybe we could grow into real neighbors to one another.

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